Thread by me.
Two weeks ago, headlines across the world announced the release of the Vatican’s official position on bioethics. Naturally, the Catholic Church’s stance on the destruction of human embryos, the creation of designer babies, and the like was greeted with scorn by liberal Catholics and by many medical professionals and scientists.
But two things truly fascinate me about the release of this document. The first is its title: “Dignitas Personae”—or, in plain English: “On the Dignity of the Person.”
Now that’s an interesting title for the Catholic Church’s official teaching on bioethics. Actually, it’s the perfect title because the question of human dignity is at the root of virtually every major question facing humans today. Not just bioethics, but also medicine, the economy, and the environment...
It is necessary to remember that feeble-mindedness is largely handed on by heredity. It was formerly supposed that idiocy and feeble-mindedness are mainly due to environmental conditions -- to the drink, depravity, general disease, or lack of nutrition of the parents; and a few authorities on the feeble-minded still hold that view. But serious as the results of such bad environmental conditions may be, and frequent as they are in the parentage of the feeble-minded, they do not form the fundamental factor in the production of the feeble-minded, and some scientific authorities even deny that they can produce mental defect in the offspring at all, though that position is doubtless too extreme. Exact investigation is now showing that feeble-mindedness is inherited to an enormous extent. Some years ago Dr. Ashby, speaking from a large experience, estimated that at least 75 per cent, of feeble-minded children are born with an inherited tendency to mental defect. More precise investigation has since shown that this estimate was under the mark.
Not only is feeble-mindedness inherited, and in a much greater degree than has hitherto been suspected even by expert authorities, but the feeble-minded tend to have a much larger number of children than normal people. That, indeed, we might expect, apart altogether from the question of any innate fertility. The feeble-minded have no forethought and no self-restraint. They are not ordinarily capable of resisting their own impulses or the solicitations of others, and they are unable to understand adequately the motives which guide the conduct of ordinary people. The average number of children of feeble-minded people seems to be usually about one-third more than in normal families, and is sometimes very much greater...